Where was I?

In my office in downtown Pittsburgh speaking by phone with the Manhattan-based chief financial officer of a Fortune 500 company whose habit was to have a financial TV station on in his office constantly for the stock ticker.  Suddenly he cuts me off mid-sentence and screams, “Oh, s—t, on the TV, right now, an airplane is crashing into the Twin Towers.” 

September 11, 2001 has been the ultimate “where were you” moment in my lifetime.  The other contenders would be the assassinations of President Kennedy and John Lennon and the resignation of President Nixon.

An extraordinary number of people remember where they were and what they were doing when they first learned that two airplanes had crashed into the Twin Towers on September 11, causing it to topple.  Many, like me, have two or three anecdotes to tell about that day or about people they know survived.  For example, I heard that my cousin’s husband was in his car on the way to work at the Twin Towers when he saw the building crumble before his eyes and realized that if he had not returned home halfway in his trip to drive his daughter to school that morning because she had forgotten her homework, he would be underneath the rubble.

During the weekend of ceremonies and news reports, most Americans over the age of 14 will remember where they were and what they were doing when they first heard or saw the horror.

And they’ll remember, and be reminded of, the nearly 3,000 victims of the attacks and the valiant efforts of the New York City police and fire departments to help them.  And they’ll remember, and be reminded of, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back and thereby prevented another plane from crashing in our nation’s capital.  And they’ll remember the soldiers who have died and those who have returned from the two wars that we have fought since then in the name of defeating terrorism.

But we will we remember that the wars themselves were foolish and useless?

More broadly, will we remember that 9/11 plunged the country into a temporary madness that allowed us to accept the dark premises of the Bush II regime? Will we remember that the country and the world still suffer because of the actions that our government chose to make in the names of all of us in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks? 

Let’s do a quick tally of what the United States has wrought since 9/11:

• Waged two long, bloody but completely aimless wars that we began because the Bush II regime lied to us about basic facts and we are still fighting because the Obama regime is too gutless to abandon them. The recent study titled Costs of War by researchers at Brown University’s Watson Institute tells the story here:
  • 225,000 people killed (low estimate), including 6,051 U.S. soldiers and 2,300 U.S. contractors.
  • $3.2-$4 trillion already spent or obligated for future spending, and counting.
• These wars have drained our country of much-needed funds for job creation and infrastructure rebuilding and are the single biggest reason we face a debt crisis (no matter how much the anti-Social Security/Medicare crowd may lie about it!)
• We created a hidden worldwide gulag in which we degraded ourselves by stooping to the level of the Torquemadas, Himmlers and Stalins of the world to illegally torture prisoners, despite the fact that that torture is immoral and all reputable research proves that it does not work.
• We established a security state that can too easily pry into our lives and abridge our individual freedoms.
• We have fostered a new wave of discrimination, this time against Muslims and immigrants.
• We have lost a lot of respect in the world, especially among developing countries.

In a sense, we have allowed Osama bin Laden to win, because so many of us, including national (Republican) leaders, have bought into his idea of a holy war between the West and Islam.  The torture policy and security apparatus make us much less the “land of the free” than we were on September 10, 2011.  The financial burden of the war and our sullied reputation in the world have weakened us and made us less capable of sustaining a (hypothetically) necessary war or addressing our economic problems.

I’m convinced that a President Al Gore would have had a more measured reaction that would not have included the Iraqi War or torture and would not have cost the country so much money and caused so much misery both here and in the places we have leveled.  But we’ll never know.

I don’t expect George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, Eric Prince and their ilk to feel any shame at what they wrought.  But during the sadness of the day, I hope the rest of us take a moment to also contemplate our guilt.  Since our leaders act in our name, all of us are responsible for their actions. 

Texas Governor Rick Perry came to last night’s debate of Republican presidential candidates with both six-shooters blazing.  Unfortunately for Cowboy Rick, the recently anointed frontrunner, all he managed to hit were his own feet.  Again and again.

From the onset, co-moderator Brian Williams set up a shoot-out between Cowboy Rick and former governor, investment banker and trust-fund baby Mitt Romney.  Romney mowed him down cleanly, coming off as a more flexible, sensible, knowledgeable and truthful person.  Of course I was the guy who though Carter outperformed Reagan in the 1980 debates (which I covered as a news writer for the San Francisco NBC affiliate).

But later on all of Perry’s wounds were self-inflicted: He came off looking very bad in his comments against Social Security.  It was made exceedingly clear that Perry was talking about destroying Social Security, whereas Romney merely wanted to reform it.

Perry’s comments against the theory of global warming were practically incoherent, as if he suddenly decided to be the star student in the George W. Bush School of Public Speaking.  The gist of his comments were that the economy can’t withstand the cost of environmental regulations.

Within Cowboy Rick’s many inconsistencies on global warming was a gem comparing his view that global warming isn’t occurring—the opinion of an infinitesimally small fraction of scientists—to Galileo being in the minority.  The problem with the Galileo analogy, which Cowboy Rick has used before, is that Galileo was not in the minority among scientists.  He was persecuted by a Church that had an economic interest in suppressing Galileo’s discoveries because they threatened the Church’s central place in the universe.  In the updated version of the Galileo persecution, Rick Perry, a representative of short-sighted energy and manufacturing interests, is playing the part of the Church, threatened by the new knowledge that science is discovering.

It wasn’t a very good day for Cowboy Rick.  While wild fires raged across a parched central Texas, reports of Perry’s slashing of the budget for fire-fighting began to get broader play in the media.  Huffington Post laid out the facts quite succinctly: ”The Texas Forest Service’s funding was sliced from $117.7 million to $83 million. More devastating cuts hit the assistance grants to volunteer fire departments around the state. Those grants were slashed 55 percent from $30 million per year in 2010 and 2011 to $13.5 million per year in 2012 and 2013. Those cuts are effective now.”

Watching the Republican Party and the mass media conspire to keep the focus almost exclusively on Romney and Perry reminded me of a show trial in a totalitarian regime.  Romney and Perry were located in the center of the group.  They received the first questions and were allowed to go at each other for a while before anyone else could get a word in.  In fact, the debate had gone on for about 20 minutes before Michele Bachmann could say anything.  But that didn’t prevent Bachmann from telling a bold-faced lie soon after her lips began moving.  She claimed she met a restaurant owner with 30 employees who had or was going to lay off one third of his workforce because of the healthcare reform law.  It had to be a lie, or the restaurant owner must be the very worst small business owner in American history, at least when it comes to carrying excess labor.

I can understand why both the Republicans and the mass media like Romney and Perry.  The Gov and ex-Gov have raised the money.  In the case of the media, it makes sense to want a candidate who has raised more money, because that candidate will spend more money on advertising. 

To those who think Mitt and Cowboy Rick received all the attention because they are the frontrunners, I assert that they are the frontrunners precisely because they have the money.  Rick leaped to the top of the media hit list before he leaped to the top of the polls because the media always covers the moneyed candidate.  It was Mitt’s money that made him the center of media attention in the 2008 election cycle.  The news media will consistently cover the candidates with more of their own or other people’s money than they do the other candidates.  That coverage then helps the moneyed candidate become the frontrunner in the polls.  

It has been very hard for me to write my thoughts upon seeing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for the first time last week, even though I knew what I wanted to say from the moment I saw the first display.  The difficulty comes in overcoming my powerful emotional reaction as a Jew so that I can write as an American about how the Holocaust Museum fits into my country’s distorted self-image.

The Holocaust Museum presents in stunning detail the step-by-step process that the Nazis and their German and non-German collaborators took first to strip European Jews of their wealth, places in society and dignity, and then to destroy them in one of the most horrifying and efficient mass murders in human history.  An oppressively riotous succession of disturbing images fills the museum—photographs, posters, signs, books, films, disembodied voices, maps, implements of torture and murder, railroad cars, concentration camp bunkers, personal effects, even the shoes of the gassed.  The crowded approach of many of our national museums works to poignant effect here, as it makes us feel in spots the claustrophobic terror of the railway cars and camp bunkers.  The Museum does an excellent job on the facts, even tracking the indifference of the United States and the rest of the world to the fate of the Jews and other Nazi victims.  I can’t imagine any sane person not coming away from the museum a little ashamed of the human race and dedicated to ending genocide.

A moving experience and a worthwhile museum…but the United States had no business building it, and it has no business funding it.

I object to the American government involvement in the Holocaust Museum because it’s only one genocide among many and one for which the United States is almost completely blameless.  Yet while we give $47.3 million a year to support this reminder of Germany’s inhumanity to Jews, we don’t have a single museum dedicated to slavery, nor one dedicated to the destruction of Native Americans.  While it is true that other museums touch upon the American horrors of Native American genocide and genocidal slavery,  none in the United States is dedicated exclusively to these shameful activities, each of which lasted about 20 times as long as the Nazi era.  In fact, the idea for a National Museum of Slavery died in 2008 for lack of funding and a Museum of Slavery and the Civil War in Selma, Alabama is so small it doesn’t even have a website or Wikipedia listing.

We ignore our history and yet can summon up the resources to commemorate the destruction of a tiny minority elsewhere (my people, but a tiny minority).

Contrast the way the United States has swept its genocidal atrocities under the rug to what Gemany has done since World War II.  There are 7 holocaust museums in Germany, plus a large number of memorials and internment camps.  Virtually every city has a public monument that explicitly says, “We did a horrible thing which we will never do again.”  Now to many victims and their families, saying “I’m sorry” just isn’t enough.  But it’s better than ignoring one’s own crimes while pointing a finger at a former enemy across the ocean.

There is a way, though, for the United States to escape this contradiction of memorializing one foreign atrocities while ignoring our own: We can repurpose the Holocaust Museum to make it a National Museum against Genocide.

Instead of three floors of exhibits about one example of genocide, we could have separate sections for a number of genocides, including, among others, the recent Rwandan, Darfur and Srebrenica genocides; the Holodomor (Stalin’s Ukrainian genocide by starvation); the Armenian genocide by the Turks at the end of World War I; the British 19th century Black War against the Tasmanian aborigines; the 19th century Great Irish and the World War II Bengali famines, both induced by British economic policies; the 16th century destruction of the Dzungar Mongols by the Chinese Qing Dynasty; the 15th century destruction of the Chama by the Vietnamese; and the German’s early 20th century destruction of the Herero and the Nama in Southwest Africa.

Who knows?  In a United States National Museum against Genocide, there might even be a little room for exhibits on American slavery and our explicit policy of destruction of Native Americans. 

Earlier today, the Obama administration announced that it is abandoning its plan to tighten air-quality rules to reduce emissions of smog-causing chemicals.  The announcement comes after weeks of zealous lobbying by large corporations, which said the new rule would cost billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The move—or in this case, lack of a move—is one more example of Obama giving in to the right-wing’s nonsense instead of fighting it with facts and backbone.  Just as with the extension of the temporary tax cuts for the wealthy and the linking of raising the debt limit to spending cuts, the Obama Administration seems to be afraid to stand up to Republicans. 

In the earlier examples, Obama delineated centrist positions and proposals, and then backed down and agreed to a rightwing deal in the spirit of “compromise.”

Today’s decision not to improve air quality is somewhat different because Obama is not just backing down, he’s also accepting the falsehoods of the other side.

The big lie, one that few among the chattering classes ever care to expose, is that environmental regulations cost jobs.  Even a cursory look at the clean environment = lost jobs argument demonstrates its illogical core.

Let’s start with the true part of what the right-wingers are saying: environmental regulation does cost money.  But where is the money going?  Towards new technology and equipment to limit the emissions from electrical power generation and other industrial processes. 

And that means jobs: jobs to design, build, ship, sell, install, use and maintain the clean air technologies and other jobs to file reports with the government. (I should also admit that over time a much lesser number of jobs will also be lost, as fewer people become ill and the impacts of global warming are mitigated, thus reducing the need for those who make money from such tragedies.  But I don’t see why anyone would not want us to lose those related jobs.)

So the billions of dollars to comply with these regulations really is not money lost to the economy, but money transferred from corporate profit to new jobs.  To be sure, some corporations may raise prices, which means that the general public will share in the cost of creating these new jobs.  But corporations raising prices always runs into the price sensitivity of consumers: if you raise prices too much, fewer people will buy your product.  And I don’t believe corporate America is going to stop producing goods and services because the profit margin decreases.  I should also point out that tax policy and government programs could help mitigate for the poor the increase in prices that could come from stronger air emission regulations.

Thus, if the Obama Administration had gone through with its original plan to strengthen emission standards the economic impact would have been to:

• Create jobs
• Effect a net transfer of wealth from corporate profit (executives and rich folk) to the unemployed.

But no one in the Obama Administration pointed out that the billions would not be lost but essentially transferred from groups with money to the unemployed.  No one pointed out that the new environmental regulations would not destroy jobs but create them.  And no one pointed out that the end result of this transfer of wealth would be cleaner air, which would help slow down global warming and result in a healthier population.

In short, instead of challenging the false premises of the rightwing, Obama threw in his cards and threw up his hands.

The Obama Administration released some weasely words about wanting to keep reducing paperwork.  (Another red herring, because paperwork creates jobs, as companies need people to measure stuff and fill out the forms.  To complete the circle on paperwork, the burden on small businesses is not great, since virtually all government paperwork and regulation beyond taxes and business structure is for companies with 15 or more employees, which is quite a nice sized business.)

I have three theories about why Obama has turned out to be Republican except in name:

• Like Jack Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, he hasn’t had enough experience in politics to be an effective wielder of power.
• Obama always was a right-winger and we misinterpreted him or he lied to us to get elected, much like the head of the Dover, Pennsylvania school board lied in a deposition about who funded the purchase of creationist literature to avoid the judge making a pre-trial ruling against the use of the claptrap in the school (see page 145, Charles Pierce’s Idiot America).
• He is feeding from the same trough as the Republicans, that is, depending on right-wing business interests for campaign funding and future considerations.

I don’t know which one it is or if it’s something else, but the result is the same.  Unlike Bill Clinton, who stood down the Republicans on the federal government shutdown or Lyndon Johnson, the ultimate velvet sledgehammer when it came to making people do the right thing (and in the tragic case of the Viet Nam War, the wrong thing, too), Obama has proven to be spinelessly ineffective.

Reading the great 20th century philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell’s The History of Western Philosophy has made me wonder once again about the motivation of the Koch brothers and other ultra-rich who oppose environmental regulation and global warming.

I’m thinking specifically about Russell’s analysis of John Locke’s ethical doctrines.  In Russell’s probably accurate version of Locke, all individuals seek pleasure.  But individuals can distinguish between immediate and future pleasure and sometimes value the future pleasure more and so forego current pleasure.  I’ll quote the part that applies specifically to the ultra-wealthy opponents of global warming and environmental regulations: “Since it is only in the long run that, according to Locke, self-interest and the general interest coincide, it becomes more important that men should be guided, as far as possible, by their long term interests.”

The long-term interest of all of us is to avoid the economic, demographic and societal upheaval that diminishing resources and climate change could cause.  But let’s face it, the ultra wealthy will inherit the earth since they control most of its natural and human-made resources.  In a real sense, the merging of everyone’s individual self-interest into the long-term community interest of protecting the environment puts everyone to work pursuing the best interests of those who own most of what constitutes the environment.

For much of recorded history, the ultra-rich held their wealth in land and the commitment of others to work the land for them.  When society disintegrated, which happened with some frequency, they could hire a militia and protect their own land.  In fact, I’ve just described much of European history from the 9th to 15th centuries C.E.

But today, the ultra-rich hold most of their wealth in numbers on computers stored by financial institutions.  They depend on governments to protect their property.  They can’t hide any more from a threat to the basic stability of society such as massive shortages of fuel and food, a pandemic or a series of weather-related disasters that displace millions.  If society disintegrates, they go under, too.

David and Charles Koch and their wealthy buddies run their businesses and manage their investments rationally, using scientific principles in their factories, research facilities, mines, fields and computer rooms.  If they didn’t believe in science, then they would be out of business.  They know that we are running out of many natural resources.  They know that we are pumping too much carbon into the environment.  They are used to acting on much less overwhelming evidence than what exists in support of the idea that human activity if causing the earth to warm in a way that could harm every living creature.

Why do these ultra-wealthy persist in opposing the very fact of global warming, greater environmental regulations and development of alternative technologies? Because it takes money out of their pockets in the short term.  It’s all short term and no long term, even though acting in the long term helps them and their families more than it helps anyone else.

I have only two explanations for such irrational behavior, both of which I think Bertrand Russell would endorse:

1.  They are true believers in a god who protects the human race and will provide a miracle or provide an answer to save us.

OR

2.  They are cynical, unethical rogues who don’t care about the future of their families or humankind, but only want to maximize their own current pleasure and extend their own wealth.

In either case, the fact that people exist who will not pursue the best interests of society even when it helps them and their families more than anyone else makes a good argument for limiting the power that any individual has over the course of events.  And in the 21st century, that means limiting wealth and income, and therefore the ability to impress irrational and self-destructive views on everyone else through making campaign contributions, advertising on issues, setting up foundations and lobbying.

We have two temporary tax cuts.  One is on federal income taxes; it’s been around for 10 years and has benefited upper incomes much more than anyone else.  The other temporary tax cut is on payroll (Social Security and Medicare) taxes and went into effect a little more than a year ago; because there is a cap on how much income is assessed for the payroll tax, this temporary tax cut has put money primarily into the pockets of the poor and middle class.

Our elected officials are now taking a close look at ending or extending these temporary tax cuts, especially in light of the almost universal desire to balance the budget and to jumpstart the economy and create new jobs.

President Obama and many Democrats want to extend the payroll tax cut and end the income tax cut for higher incomes.  The Republicans want to do just the opposite: to restore the payroll tax cut while keeping the income tax cuts for the wealthy. No one seems to want to touch the temporary-for-10-years income tax cut on middle and lower incomes.

Both give the very same reasons for their proposals: We can’t end the tax cut we like because it will hurt the economy, but we have to end the tax cut we don’t like to help pay down the deficit.

Who is right and who is wrong?

Republicans say that it’s the rich folk who invest in businesses that produce jobs, so we better not limit their ability to do so by taking money from them.  Let’s examine this idea in light of current business practices.  Before making any investment that produces jobs, a company or individual analyzes the marketplace, seeking to answer one question: is there a need or can I readily create a need for this product or service in this market?  If no market exists, the company and business doesn’t make the investment.  If there is no investment to make, they’ll raise salaries, usually for executives only, and pay out dividends.  This additional wealth will end up driving up stocks, luxury goods and artwork, which creates little if any new jobs. In a slumping economy, there is by definition less reason to invest, since fewer people have money to spend. 

By contrast, virtually all of the additional money the poor and middle class have received from the temporary payroll tax cut has been spent and will continue to be spent, thus maintaining or increasing demand for a wide range of goods and services.  Businesses will retain or create jobs to meet that demand, even if they end up paying more in taxes, because they’ll be making more money.  As Warren Buffet recently pointed out, people and companies don’t avoid making more money as a way to avoid paying additional taxes.  High taxes or low, they’ll want to make the money.

Thus, without considering any issues of fairness or equity, it makes more sense to extend the temporary payroll tax because it will at the very least continue demand.  But it makes no sense to continue to extend the 10-year tax break for the wealthy, since unless there is greater demand from the general public, they will likely not use the extra money to create jobs; and if there is demand from the general public, not having the tax cut will not serve as an impediment to additional investment.

The Republicans have it entirely wrong, then, that is, if we assume that they are truly interested in righting the economy and creating more jobs.  If, on the other hand, their true interest is to use tax policy and government spending to shift wealth to their top contributors, i.e., the wealthy, then their proposal to end the payroll tax cut while continuing the income tax cut for all incomes makes perfect sense.

For most of the history of direct and representative democracy, only a limited few were allowed to participate as voters in making decisions or electing representatives, typically free males with property.  Ancient Athens, the late medieval and early Renaissance Italian city states and England for most of its democratic history come immediately to mind.  In John Locke’s description of an ideal democracy, only free male property owners vote.  That’s what our founding fathers thought, too, adding “white” as an additional qualifier.

It was only after many struggles throughout the 19th and 20th century that all Americans aged 18 or older, white or black, male or female, got the unimpeded right to vote.

Now Republicans want to turn back the clock and limit voting rights. 

Because the poor, minorities and those under 30 did not vote in the last election in great numbers, the Republicans now have control of a majority of state governments.  And everywhere they have introduced legislation that restricts voting or makes it harder to vote.  I imagine that the Republican ideal is that voting be limited to white males and females plus anyone in the top 20-30% when it comes to income and wealth. 

Georgia Democratic Representative and civil rights icon John Lewis wrote an impassioned article on this Republican attempt to disenfranchise millions of Americans in this past Saturday’s New York Times.  Lewis speaks with a certain authority, having suffered more physical blows than any other person in the decades-long fight for voting and other civil rights.  And I mean punches, beatings, whippings, hosings, birchings and canings.  I urge everyone to read the article, which is full of many examples of new laws in 12 states that make it harder to vote (and proposed laws making their way through the legislatures of another 23 states). 

As Lewis so effectively demonstrates, all of these new and proposed laws tend to make it harder for traditional Democratic voters to cast a ballot.  One example will suffice: the new Texas law requiring an ID to vote allows people to use state hunting licenses but not IDs from state colleges.

Unless an Obama landslide carries Democrats back into power, the rightwingers will have another 2-4 years to pass more restrictive voting laws.  In the end, the Republicans could achieve a permanent electorate majority even while establishing itself as a minority party among the total adult population. 

Whether our future electorate represents the broad spectrum of Americans or skewers towards whites and the propertied, it is growing ever more conservative on non-economic issues such as abortion, gun rights, belief in global warming, belief in evolution and capital punishment. 

But on the economic front, we are still quite liberal.  We want to tax the wealthy more, cut military spending, extend unemployment benefits, regulate industries for safety and environmental emission, invest in improving our infrastructure, continue Social Security and Medicare in its current forms and create a more equitable society.

The one economic issue on which Americans are becoming more conservative is unions.  After years of seeing and hearing business and the mass media assault unions, many Americans now envy the good wages and benefits of union workers instead of trying to emulate them.  Perhaps envy is an emotion more in keeping with the politics of selfishness that has dominated American thinking for the past 30 years.  Besides spreading poison in the media about unions, the rightwing has spent those 30 years weakening unions.  We are now seeing the “final solution” in the battering of public unions by Republican legislatures, once again aided and abetted by the right-wing and the mainstream media.

With the union base of the Democratic Party in near ruins, the Republicans have their sights set on Democratic voters.  And if the Democratic Party doesn’t put tons of money into bringing the voters out in 2011 and 2012, Republicans are going to pull the trigger and take down the important achievements of the voting rights movement.